PREFACE

vii

"adit" may be an entrance to a mine. I have used the word "adit" to

denote the avenue by which a partial inclusion in a rock particle can be

reached by a surrounding liquid. I avoided using the word "pore" in

this sense because a pore when closed cannot be an adit. (Considera-

tions of viscosity, trapped gases and interfacial energy might keep even

an open pore from being an adit.) In fact, a series of cracks and pores

might be required to constitute an adit.

The people who helped me prepare this book are too numerous for me

to list, but they know who they are and I wish to thank all of them.

Among them I have in mind the people who copy photographs, the drafts-

men, and the careful typistsincluding the substitute typist who copied

my handwriting exactly as it appeared to her. Thus, I had to change

"uranuim" to "uranium" over a hundred times on the typescript, to say

nothing of transposing the i and u in "equilibrium," in "raduis" and in

"titanuim." Of those who criticized portions of the book at one stage

or another, one helpful critic cheerfully told me that he had detected an

error of omission, commission or typography on every page that he had

read. Although, as he confessed, he had read only eight pages, it is

humbling to estimate that, at such an error concentration, over eleven

hundred uncorrected errors remain to be found.

Despite the book's faults, my objectives in writing it have, in my

opinion, been accomplished. Without being a handbook, an encyclo-

pedia, or an engineering text, the book is a comprehensive review of

uranium process metallurgy, corrosion and alloys. I trust that only a

very sophisticated metallurgist will find in it nothing that is new to him,

and that only a very unsophisticated one will find much in it that is

difficult to understand. I should add that the book is divided into two

semi-independent parts: Volume I, Uranium Process Metallurgy, and

Volume II, Uranium Corrosion and Alloys. In order to conform more

nearly with the specialized needs of some readers, either volume is ob-

tainable separately.

March, 1962

W. D. WILKINSON

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